Bloom's Taxonomy Is a Way of Evaluating Essay

Bloom's Taxonomy is a way of evaluating educational goals as they relate to student performance. The taxonomy was developed originally as more of a measurement tool, to serve as a common language about learning goals to help individuals communicate ideas pertaining to subject matter and grade levels. The idea was that this common language would serve to facilitate a basis for determining a particular curriculum, and the alignment of objectives, activities, and assessments (Krathwohl, 2002).

According to Halawi, McCarthy, and Pires (2009) Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl categorized learning into three domains of behavior, cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Bloom further categorized these domains into simple and complex classifications. The cognitive domain deals with the recall or recognition of knowledge and the development of intellectual abilities and skills. The affective domain concerns changes in interest, attitudes, and values, and the development of appreciations and adequate adjustment. The psychomotor domain encompassed the manipulative or motor-skill area. Bloom's Taxonomy applies only to acquiring knowledge in the cognitive domain, which involves intellectual skill development.

Discussion

The original taxonomy addressed six categories in the cognitive domain, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis or creativity, and evaluation.Briefly knowledge is defined as the remembering or recalling of appropriate, previously learned information and describes the ability to define, describe, identify, label, list, match, and name. Comprehension involves understanding the meaning of informational materials. Application refers to the use of previously learned information in new and concrete situations to solve problems. Analysis is the breaking down of informational materials into their component parts and trying to understand the organizational structure of such information (Bloom, 1956).

A revised version of the taxonomy was created in 2000. A significant change from the original version was the reordering of the domains whereby creativity became a higher order thinking skill than evaluation.

Evaluation is the ability judge the value of material based on personal values and/or opinions. This level is where the learner is required to make judgments about the value of ideas, items, materials, and more. It is at this level where students are expected bring in all they have learned to make informed and sound evaluations of….....